Independent and experienced viewpoints on technology, network services and support, social media, usability, trends, and insights for associations and nonprofit organizations.

Marketing

April 13, 2012

Location-based marketing (LBM) services like foursquare, Instagram, Plancast, and GetGlue allow many of us to check into almost anything, whether TV shows, movies, or conferences and share it with our community.

As mobile adaption continues to grow over the past 12 months, location-based marketing services are also gaining traction. I recently joined a Focus roundtable with smart marketers from Silverpop, LunaMetrics, WCG, and the Location Based Marketing Association. The roundtable discussed key statistics around location-based marketing, the players, best practices, and case studies. Thanks to all of this rich content, I’ll cover what associations should be concerned with in this two-part blog post.

Location, Location, Location – Find Us!

Most associations are professionally using geolocation services minimally, adding their office(s) and/or conferences to Foursquare and leaving some suggested tips for visitors. Some orgs may be dabbling in geo more than others with promo codes offered (example: 15% off when you download this white paper) or via a “Treasure Hunt” game on the expo floor at an association's trade show, rewarding attendees for visiting a certain number of booths. Few, however, are using geo as part of a larger location-based marketing strategy.

Currently, spending on location-based marketing is at $460 million in the United States. Consumer adaption is showing good incremental growth. One year ago, only 8% of the U.S. population shared location versus 20% now. The market is growing, but concerns over privacy issues are slowing it down rather than speeding it up.

A lengthy discussion around the Girls Around Me mobile app was a big topic for the roundtable on the privacy front, but panelists were quick to point out that there are over 500 different apps out there just like it. Asif Khan, President & Founder of the Location Based Marketing Association, also pointed out that the split of location-based users is closer to 50/50 male/female.

So, while most of us our networking, sharing tips, and hoping our check-ins aren’t attracting any creeps, here’s what associations can do right now to ensure they’re geo-friendly and searchable:

Tip 1: Google Places – Are you listed on it?

Keep in mind that most people search for businesses online, so keeping a free, quick, and up-to-date location on Google Places and Google Maps is essential, and since this is a Google service, you better believe it’s going to ensure you have higher search rankings.

From the various apps like Highlight, Sonar, Glancee, and Kismet released last month at SXSW Interactive, what the new applications are offering are more ways to engage in "people discovery" and to navigate multiple events that live stacked on top of each other. In the future I believe we'll continue to see more products roll out that attempt to seamlessly stitch mobile and geo as part of our daily lives. Anyone who has taken a look at this Google Project Glass video sees Siri’s future step-sister in the making.

While I’m not exactly psyched to jump on the DC Beltway anytime soon with a bunch of Project Glass-wearing drivers, it would be really nice to have my coffee order queued up at Starbucks and paid for, all via one device the next time my car inches into the parking lot. Not an idea that’s too far away, but still poses some operational dilemmas.

More Tips to Come in How "Associations Can Use Location-Based Marketing: Part Deux"

April 22, 2011

As you can see, it immediately invites the recipient to open the curtain, where a private or unique experience awaits in the form of a backstage pass. It was especially intriguing to me because we've used the backstage pass idea here at DelCor in the past, and I wanted to see how it unfolded (figuratively) here.

But, when I pulled back the curtain, I revealed nothing more than the disappointing Wizard of DM. (If you recall, the Wizard of Oz was nothing more than an average, powerless man behind a curtain.)

There were no instructions within the printed piece, and no indication of who sent it (or why) – just their company logo and web address. So, I typed it into my browser. I got this:

See that little red rectangle in the bottom right corner? It looks pretty much like the one I received in my mailbox. So, I thought, perhaps we can save this experience. Although no instructions are on the webpage, the image is clickable. I gave it a mouse-click and got this:

At this point, the entire campaign didn't just flop – it was total meltdown. An empty Facebook page? Really? This is what you're promoting? And this from a *communications* company? Wow.

What started out as a tactile, intriguing experience with a custom direct mail piece turned into an online debacle. The sender's fun-looking piece was a total flop! They didn't bother to thread the entire experience together (except that there were clear missteps at every stage).

Here are a few questions that could have prevented this total disconnect:

What do your various forms of communication say about your organization?

Is there anything behind the curtain?

Do all the pieces connect – and leave the viewer wanting more?

Avoid this sort of let-down by walking through the user/member/buyer/participant experience that your organization's communications offer. See if the dots connect, and where you're fulfilling or failing your promise. Remember that the slightest foible can be forgiven – or cause your organization to be forgotten.

November 30, 2010

IT or marketing—which department "owns" your association's website? The truth is, both can have influence, along with all of the other departments at your association. Even your members can play an important role. Social media, online communities, and SaaS make it possible for everyone to contribute to an organization's online presence and personality.

November 03, 2010

If you are familiar with QR codes, you may have already flipped out your smartphone and discovered the information hidden in this code. If you are not familiar with QR codes (part of a larger category of "2D codes"), then you are probably getting a little nervous that something new and techy is coming your way before you've even had a chance to understand Twitter.

Not to worry! QR codes are as easy to understand as a box of Cracker Jacks. Let me explain...

Remember how excited you were as a kid when you opened a box of Cracker Jacks to discover a decoder ring that would allow you to translate hidden messages?

QR codes are alike those hidden messages with an efficient, real-world purpose. They easily take your smartphone where it needs to go (a URL, a photo, contact information, anything!) based on the information in the code...and then allow you to SAVE that information to your smartphone.

As an article by Fast Company put it, "Imagine a QR code that instantly makes the person scanning it a fan of a brand, company, or personality on Facebook without ever typing a URL."

iPhone apps with the purpose of scanning business cards (which you then need to go in and clean up) are pointless when you have a QR code on a business card. With the addition of the code, you can scan the code and immediately add that person's information to your phone. Awesome!

﻿﻿﻿Best Buy is investing heavily in QR code stickers before this Christmas season. Customers will be able to look up reviews and sales by scanning the code with their smartphones.

Real estate agents are starting to use them on their real estate signs. People don't want to get out of their cars or take a flyer...they scan the codes with their phones and get the details from the website on their smartphones.

Delta airlines has even started using QR codes at the gates so people can check in with their codes rather than a boarding pass.

At meetings, exhibitors are starting to use QR codes on their signage, shirts, and promo items to give out more information with the least amount of waste.

What do you need to get started? Not a lot. But you must have a smartphone with a camera built-in. With a smartphone you can download the free scanner apps that allow you to both read and create your own QR codes.

Different smartphones use different apps, but the iPhone (my smartphone) has apps like 2D Sense, i-nigma, and the two apps I use: Optiscan and Optishare. You can search the Web for "QR Reader" and the model of your phone to find other scanner apps.

August 30, 2010

Back in the 80s, Sony followed on the huge success of the
Walkman with My First Sony,
a series of electronic toys for children, intended to endear them to the Sony
brand, no doubt, as the hubristic name implies.

Out of the 80s (and 60s and 70s) came the inspiration for
another, much more humble, invention: the DelCor exhibit at #ASAE10. This booth
served as the hub of My First ASAE. Like the Sony products, it was bright and
bold, perhaps not fully functional, but still incredibly enjoyable.

It almost seems silly to say that, out of everything LA has
to offer, I had the most fun in booth #226. (Well, almost. Meeting Susan Feniger
was a real highlight.) After all, I spent months pulling it together (inspired
by our new ad campaign by Bates Creative Group), weeks
promoting it to my colleagues and Friends
of DelCor, and a full day assembling it. When the floodgates opened Sunday
morning, I was delighted to see the laughs, smiles,
and oh-my-goshes of passersby (particularly when they spotted the Commodore 64 on display).
(Where, by the way, were all
the Apple fans?)

After a full day of exhibiting, an inedible lunch, an
unfortunate overlap with afternoon sessions, and a night working the Conga Room, I was a bit weary coming back for
day two. But my stick-on moustache turned upside-down when I arrived at the
expo hall. Our humble and crazy little booth had been selected Best
in Show 2nd Place In-line Booth by first-time attendees. Whoa,
dude! It made me feel good not just that we won something, but that people were
actually connecting with us, and with this crazy idea that I had.

Day two turned out to be productive and just as fun as the
first – only with better lunch! Greg Hill
posted our top Pac-Man score with more than 17,000 points. And we gave out almost
all of our retro-inspired tchatchkes. (Where will the moustache turn up next?)
A live #sweetspot
broadcast over our plasma TV and participation in the first-ever Foursquare
Technology Booth Crawl rounded out the booth experience and kept me busy – as
if seeing fellow DelCorians in retro wear hadn’t already taken the [cup]cake.

Leaving the booth behind on day three gave me a little
opportunity for learning beyond the expo hall, but only enough to whet my
appetite. Like other attendees, I hope for more session blocks next year,
because exhibitors like to learn, too!

I may not have found my mojo in LA, but I found my groovy. It plays well with My First Sony, I might add. So well that
I’m already counting down to St. Louis.

August 11, 2010

When my little sister arrived home from pre-school with Kool-Aid stains on the corners of her mouth and a feisty swagger in her step, my mother followed behind with weary eyes and a slumpy sort of half walk. I was five years older than my sister and she, unlike me, was a natural born leader.

While I always tried to adhere to any semblance of rules I could identify (this habit dramatically reversed for me in high school), my sister had no interest. I was the good girl. She was the bad. I secretly approved.

On this particular day, my mother shared my sister's latest coup. It seems that when Mrs. Imey asked all the children to pick up the toys before the next activity, my sister refused. After multiple attempts, my sister announced to all the room "We don't have to do what you say!" and crawled underneath a piano bench. The other children took that as a call to action and followed suit and the room's dynamic became teachers vs. students in a religious preschool setting. My sister blockaded the other preschoolers behind a row of toys and eventually was captured and sent to the "baby room" to sit and think about what she'd done. She escaped and was subsequently recaptured and returned to her holding cell/baby room until my mother arrived.

My sister's words carried weight with her peers and before she even hit kindergarten, she had discovered the ability to lead.

Many organizations underestimate how many natural leaders are in their midsts, receiving newsletters, attending meetings. They fail to recognize potential ambassadors for their brands, often brushing aside casual email and phone exchanges with the very people who might carry the keys to rejuvenating a stale or plateaued membership.

My younger sister at the age of three was able to coerce her companions to do what she did and today we see via word of mouth marketing and use of social media the power one strong voice can have.

What is your organization doing today to identify and work with those voices? Are you monitoring mentions of your association or keywords in your industry to see who is talking about you? Do you reach out to those key influencers once identified?

Your homework for today is to write down one thing you can start doing to identify your leaders inside your organization. (Hint: A member serach using job titles won't help you.)

July 30, 2010

DelCor's Social Media Sweet Spot is a weekly webcast featuring news of social media conversations, events, and programs for the association world. Social Media.

I host the show. My name is KiKi L’Italien, senior consultant in technology management for DelCor, blogger on Acronym Soup and here on the DelCor Connection Blog. I also moderate the weekly Association Chat held on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. ET on Twitter, so the Social Media Sweet Spot web show allows me a chance to share a lot of what I come across of interest during the week.

How are women and girls reshaping the future? The first ever TEDWomen invites men and women to explore this question in depth: From the developing world, where a single micro-loan to a single girl can transform a village; to the West, where generations of educated women are transforming entire industries. The diverse international program takes a long look at women through the lens of change agent, intellectual innovator, idea champion ...

Elizabeth succinctly states that TED may be unintentionally "ghettoizing" woman by creating a separate space for discussions about their issues.What do you think?

There were 18 responses to this post and most of them appear to show similar concerns. This discussion has even gone into comparing articles and reports on women vs. men’s wages and includes many well-known names from the association blogosphere, such as Wes Trochlil, Ray Van Hilst, Shannon Otto, Maggie McGary, Maddie Grant, Lisa Junker, Lynn Morton, among others. In other words, this is a conversation that may pop up in LA and further down the road and it’s a good one to be aware of for association cocktail hours.

Another popular discussion item for this week happened on the ASAE Executive Management Section list serve. "An almost-Friday Question" posted on Thursday by Donna French Dunn, CAE with the Association of YMCA Professionals. She asked, “What happens to the introverts of the world when social networking and social media is all there is?”

This question prompted close to 14 responses, including some from Kevin Whorton, Vinay Kumar, Cecillia Sepp, and Jeff Cobb who all are quite active in the association community and blogosphere. The overall direction of the conversation seemed to highlight all of the ways introverted people could relate to the world using social networking and other online tools and the conversation actually continued into today…which is Friday…Donna posted her “aha” realization from the conversations which was recognizing her own preferences for downtime away from work. Again, this was a popular discussion and worth taking a look at if you subscribe to the list serves.

There was another hugely active discussion on the Membership list serve that had to do with “Social networking site within your web site?” posted by Shaine Anderson, CAE, Director of Membership for PLANET.

He stated:

After attending the ASAE membership and marketing symposium recently, Icame away feeling like it was important to at least explore the idea ofhaving a social/professional networking component to our new web site,which we are currently building. I mean, after all, the biggest benefitour members see in joining and renewing with our association isNETWORKING. So, what greater asset than giving them a forum to networkand share best practices/ideas right from their desktops.....makessense, right?

Our web master says don't act so fast. He says that many of theassociation social/professional networking sites (housed WITHIN theirown web sites....separate from FB, etc.) that are being launched thesedays are not very successful because their members aren't using them.But, what I heard at the membership/marketing symposium was verydifferent - that associations WERE seeing these sub-sites as successful,and of course, everyone understands that it takes TIME to build themomentum around them. I certainly understand that "feeding the beast"is key to launching the site successfully....

Terrance Barkan and about 9 others responded with their thoughts and comments, giving solid examples and reasons for establishing a private community. Check out the ASAE list serve for membership (and it was cross posted to marketing) and look at the discussion. If you don’t have access to those, then you can contact me and I will share a synopsis of the discussion.

Tuesday’s Association Chat discussed “Nonprofit Executive Salaries” and was inspired by the article in Monday’s New York Times article on “Lawmakers Seeking Cuts Looking at Nonprofit Salaries,” which starts out by sharing that a provision of New Jersey’s recently passed budget includes a limit on what nonprofit groups can pay their chief executives. As you can imagine this was an interesting topic and one that is far from over, I can tell.

[You can get a transcript of that conversation by logging into What the Hashtag.com and looking for #assnchat and the date, which was July 27.]

I have read the book and I have to say there is some solid information in there. This is good for nonprofits wishing to be successful as they enter the social media realm.

What I particularly enjoyed was the section on “Mapping an Organization’s Social Network” because they actually shared the activity and process down to telling you what you need in the room, like a flip chart, etc, to do this activity on your own. Reading this book could save associations consulting hours in the beginning by getting their people more aware of where their organization stands social media-wise and where the organization should be.

They have a section on "Measuring and Engagement" which shares the importance of blogs and how you can track engagement online. They have a great glossary in the back and so I would say this is a fabulous guide for an internal team who has been appointed as a social media team for the organization…this can serve as a manual for thinking through the crucial first steps.

So my rating? I say make room for it if you are serving on a social media team or work to make things simpler for people just starting out. The way this book explains each area is simple in a non-condescending way which just makes you happy all the way around when it makes your life easier, too.What Else is Hot?…

A little bit of homework about the people online focused on measuring the effectiveness of PR (mostly online) and a set of guidelines they’ve established called the “Barcelona Principles” which you can read about on the MetricMan blog

Congratulations to Kivi for finding the Social Media Sweet Spot! Thank you for providing service to the association community by continuing to provide useful information about how associations can best use social media!

NEXT WEEK I welcome Jessica Sidman of Association Bisnow as a special guest co-host for the Sweet Spot. Associations Bisnow is a popular newsletter in the nonprofit community distributed widely by email by Bisnow Media, so we should have a fun time talking with Jessica and getting her perspective on attending all of these association parties and meetings.

July 26, 2010

There are many reasons SmartBrief and SocialFish's Buzz 2010 series rises above many other meetings and events offered to social media and association industry types in the DC Metro region. The star quality speakers, immediately applicable topics, and amazing opportunity for top of the line networking certainly explain why so many people would find Buzz 2010 appealing.

But for anyone interested in promotion, Buzz also provides an excellent case study on how to best utilize traditional and social media tools to spread the word about meetings and events. Over the next few days I am going to cover what I love most about the Buzz 2010 campaign, including Recognizing and Respecting Your Fan Base; Providing Regular Touchpoints; and Providing Ample WOM Opportunity.

Recognize & Respect Your Fan Base

One of the smartest things an event host can do is recognize the power of his or her own network. SocialFish reached out to a cadre of their connections - association bloggers and others - to give hints at what they were planning. They gave everyone just enough information to entice and provoke conversations to build a rapport and support for their efforts.

They respectfully acknowledged the blogger community and asked if bloggers wouldn't mind posting something about the event. They created goodwill among the association blogger community before anyone else had heard much about the event at all...and then they began sharing the dates so people could save them on their calendars. SocialFish used their already lively networks and speaking engagements to mention the upcoming event and had a website ready for people to visit should they have any questions.

One of my favorite ways they recognized supporters was to create "Team Buzz" after asking for volunteers and making it a special honor to sit close and report on the event's happenings. This created more coverage for them in more areas online than almost anything else they could have done. Team Buzz participants felt special and committed to covering the events as they progressed. There were no directives on what a Team Buzz participant could and could not say...Team Buzz was respected from the beginning which generated a lot of positive energy for Buzz 2010 right from the beginning.

Once a person signed up to hear more about the event, they received regular updates about Buzz 2010. By "regular" I mean at least weekly and usually more often. The updates were never too promotional sounding and always had an authentic ring to them.

Check in next week for Part 2 of Rising Above the Hum: The Power of Buzz.